Economy of the entire Far East will stand to gain from an earliest possible commissioning of the Sakhalin-3 offshore oil and gas project

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YUZHNO-SAKHALINSK, September 27 (Itar-Tass) — Economy of the entire Far East will stand to gain from an earliest possible commissioning of the Sakhalin-3 offshore oil and gas project for full-scale commercial operations, Alexander Khoroshavin, the governor of Russia’s Far-Eastern Sakhalin region said Tuesday.

He said it at the international conference titled ‘The Sakhalin Oil & Gas’, an annual event that has been held in Yuzhno-Sakhalinsk over the past six years.

Prior to that, nine conferences in the series were held in London.

“It’s extremely important to see how strongly the image of the Sakhalin region as a new international-scale center of oil and gas production has grown in the minds of the world community,” Gov Khoroshavin said, adding that this image is based on two projects – Sakhalin-1 and Sakhalin-2.

Production of crude oil on Sakhalin’s shelf started in 1999 as part of Sakhalin-1 and in 2006 as part of Sakhalin-2.

The Sakhalin-3 project embraces four blocks of shelf deposits – the Kirinsky, Veninsky, Ayashsky, and Eastern Odoptinsky. Forecasts put the size of hydrocarbon resources concealed there at around 700 million tons of crude and 1.3 trillion cubic meters of natural gas.

These reserves are much bigger than the composite resource of both Sakhalin-1 and Sakhalin-2.

At present, oil and gas deposits on the Sakhalin shelf are being developed by the Sakhalin Energy international company, which is the operator of the Sakhalin-2 project, and the U.S. company Exxon Neftegaz Ltd., the operator of the Sakhalin-1 project.

The combined output of crude on the shelf is expected to stand at no less than 15 million tons in 2011.

Four maritime platforms have been installed in the Sea of Okhotsk to extract oil and gas from the deposits underlying the sea floor. The hydrocarbons are also produced with the aid of inclination wells drilled from ashore.

The projects continue developing. A foundation of a new giant platform is being built in the Russian Far-Eastern port city of Nakhodka for Exxon Neftegaz Ltd., and its upper deck has been commissioned to a South Korean company.

This platform is due to come into operation on the Sakhalin shelf in 2014.